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We DO NOT like Smithfield. Hubby Frank and I have grown up in Virginia (for 65+ years). Smithfield has ruined pigs.....they've been bred to be lean, tough, and dry. There was a time when hogs used for Smithfield hams were fed (at least finished) on peanuts. The meat was similar in fat to prime beef (the prime beef of that time, not the junk we have today). They've bought up just about everything pork. The only thing pork we buy here now is butts for smoking, and they're nowhere near as good as they used to be. Just about all the places that aren't owned by Smithfield Foods and cure their own country hams buy the fresh meat from Smithfield Foods. In case anybody's interested in a really good country ham, R.M. Felts in Ivor, VA, produces the best we've had in many years. They don't use Smithfield Foods meat. We buy at least 3 a year directly from them. They're on the north side of Rt 460, and you just walk into the processing plant, breathe in all that wonderful pig/smoke, see the 8' high mountain of hams layered in salt, and tell them what size you want. Fortunately we pass by there on the way to and from Duck. They're not open on Sunday, maybe open till noon on Sat, and shut down religiously from 12 to 1 for lunch.

It's not just Smithfield. They've mostly all been ruined so they can call it "the other white meat". When it comes to meat and poultry, Americans have gotten just what they demanded...and deserve. Tasteless and cheap....and less fattening. ;-)

The meat is leaner, but from what I understand, the lower fat content also means your brain doesn't get the "I'm full" signal as quickly. You could therefore end up eating more - of the meat itself or just overall at the table - as a result.

Back in Germany at my local Farmers' market were three, sometimes four, butcher trucks selling meats. One of them always had a long line, and his ham was the best I ever had - It tasted like pork, like I remembered it from my childhood. I asked him what he did that his ham tasted so good. "Absolutely nothing, that's the whole point. " he said. But he ce from a small village and new the pigs by name, knew what they were fed by his neighbors etc. That ham is one of the things I miss. Over here, many of them are glued together or for some inexplicable reason are yet another product that has sugar added to it... Whenever I go home, I drive 40 miles from my parents place to buy that ham.

Smithfield, Hormel, IBG, Cargill. It's all crap. I am a Virginian and a butcher that has been in the sustainable meat industry my whole adult life and I hate what they have done to my beloved pig in the past 40 years. Also talking fattier pigs, when a pig is fed a proper foraged diet it's fat is an HDL not an LDL. Pigs are the only meat where this is the case but only if it's fed right. Not to mention factory pigs, especially yorkshires, have been bred so lean that they can not survive outside. They will actually die from exposure if they are left outside. No one in the world is fat because they ate a more marbled piece of meat. A century ago hams from Smithfield used to be considered some of the best hams in the world do to the fact they where allowed to forage in the peanut fields. Think iberico with acorns. Now it's about on par with spam. Ps pay an extra 50 cents for jowls that aren't factory raised. There are so many glands in jowls. It is the last piece of meat you want from a factory farm.